Forget H2H records: are Premier League games now about the manager’s form?

Carlos Alcaraz and Aryna Sabalenka look to defend their titles as the year's final Grand Slam begins on Sunday.

Led by the nose from game to terrible game by increasingly disturbing and terrible adverts, I feel like I’m in the cinema scene from A Clockwork Orange We’re all escaping something when we play video games. Mostly it’s the drabness of real life, where we don’t get to command kingdoms using armies of dragons, win Champions League trophies with our local team, or inhabit the body of an improbably speedy hedgehog. Sometimes I play them because I want to escape from the version of me that gets paralysed by depression, and boy has the black dog been sniffing at my bits recently, because the Atlantic Ocean is separating me from my wife for a few months. For 30 years she has been the light that banishes that darkness, and I am honestly lost without her. If that sounds pathetic, you haven’t met her. She leaves everybody she meets feeling better. It’s a superpower that warrants a call from the X-Men...

Updates from the latest round of Championship matches Day one roundup | Sign up for the Spin | Mail Tanya I want to eat all my breakfasts on the North Bay drinking coffee out of a cornflower blue cup, in the shadow of a ruined castle, to the rhythm of the waves. Delicious cheese scone too. Durham coach Ryan Campbell told BBC sport last night thatBrydon Carse was mortified by events in Derby, but would play for Durham unless they were told otherwise...